Abigail always wants to go inside. No matter where we are, she always asks to go inside. The only problem with this is that she almost never wants to go inside. Passing through any door is “going inside.”

“Fiendish!” I said in Abigail’s vicinity, regarding something I don’t recall.

“Fiendish!” Abigail repeated, grinning between mouthfuls of waffle.

Her grasp of language is tremendous; she’ll pick up and repeat pretty much any word you say – or even ones she hears on TV.

“Auf Wiedersehen,” Abigail said with a wave to a German relative, after hearing the term for the first time.

Since she’s tremendously observant and a quick study.

“That’s a forehead,” Abigail said, definitively, pointing to the bald spot at the back of my Dad’s head.

She can take the words she knows and apply them to related, real world situations. For example, that forehead is not where you might expect it to be, and yet, clearly, it is a forehead. She also would call a spade a spade, but since I’ve never said “spade” in front of her, she would probably call it a shovel.

“Daddy’s naked,” Abigail announced. I had just removed my socks. Upon review, I determined that my shorts and t-shirt were still on.

She doesn’t waste an opportunity to express her broad-minded views on nudity, either her own or that of others. She’s quick excepting of any form of nakedness. But, just like your typical fundamentalist, she has some trouble understanding its definition.

“You had a good day at Target,” I told her, watching her play with her new Thomas the Train set.